How do I skaven early game?

[Dracos]

Skaven have always been my favorite race thematically, they got me into Warhammer 2 from Vermintide, but I can't seem to get to the fun stuff. I think it's due to their early game being poor, and end up just trying to get by with skavenslaves.

Maybe I have it wrong, but it seems the common Skaven strat is to get to tier 3/4, then use a lot of ratling guns, jezzails, plagueclaw catapults, and such. It doesn't seem like they have many early game options like other races, as clanrats are just more expensive skavenslaves, and warpfire throwers are hard to use

[Andrewbh2003]

i mean you can get your first settlement to tier 4 VERY fast as skaven thanks to food so you can start pumpin out higher tier units quite early "earlier than pretty much any other race"

[Mandras]

Here's what you do, no op DLC units required:

When you take your first (probably minor) settlement, settle it at tier III, then build a workshop to get an Engineer and 3 catapults. Destroy your clanrat building for cash. Build the assassin den to get 2 Assassin heroes, and maybe some night-runners. Right there you now have 4 characters who can goon any lord or monster and even tank the enemy army while artillery flattens their infantry. Demolish the engineer workshop for cash, then build a rat ogre building mainly for the technology prerequisite, and optionally recruit 1-2 rat ogres. In battle rely on Menace Below to remove enemy artillery or to rear charge. Use an Assassin running in a tight circle to waste their ammo.

Hire a second lord to bait AI armies into ambushes. Place him near the enemy army, with your main force in ambush stance right in front of him. The AI will fall for it every time.

Now focus on your food cap. You start at 105, but need to increase it to 120. This requires 3 additional settlements or certain techs. With 120 food saved, take a primary settlement and colonize it at tier V. Build a garrison structure and a Pestilent Nave to get 2 plague priests. With 7 melee capable characters (2 Lords, 5 heroes), and a max level settlement, there is no way you can lose a campaign.

[AVGAMER]

You get into a fair fight and just charge at them. Preferably head on.

[Michael Daemon]

Use large numbers to your advantage to completely surround the enemy and get some good flanking bonuses.
Slaves up front to eat the damage and harder hitting units circle around back to take full advantage of flank.

Don't discount skavenslave slingers either, put a few on the same target and their value starts to show.

[ThotPocket]

If you're playing as the Skaven you should be avoiding a fair fight at all costs.

I like to use two armies, one army has my main lord and best troops, the other army is full of nothing but Skavenslaves and/or Clanrats.

Keep the good army hidden in ambush stance, and use the bait army to lure the enemy out. Once battle starts, I always start by sending in all the slaves en masse. No organization to it, I just order a full charge. Most, if not all of them, will probably die and route, but that's their purpose - deplete enemy ammunition, make enemy units tired, maybe do a little bit of damage, generally just soften everything up for the real army.

I also like to go full Edward the Longshanks and have my troops fire into the Skavenslave melee. Remember, you're Skaven, there's no such thing as friendly fire.

[Lady MacBeth]

You stab stab yes yes.

or something like that.

[ThotPocket]

Originally posted by Ming:

You stab stab yes yes.

or something like that.

You've got the gist of it. :)

[cary2010haha]

the problem is every clan have their special start plans, which clan do you play?


Slave is only used to get kill, they aint the solution

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AmoZYPgACyeqnTUhRB-kOUfsCHWr

This is some good starting team for clan skyre.
If you play death master you team should be night runner and death runners

[Dakota]

Personally I found warpfire throwers to be able to carry pretty hard in early game, even making autoresolves an easy win in many cases. I didn't particularly like the infinite skavenslave spam alternative since even with 3 armies against 1 that isn't even that tough it just adds a lot of clutter to what's going on rather than providing a useful buffering. Got to maintain a good elites to meatshields level, least until later on where you no longer need the meatshields or have a warpfirethrower frontline or something.

Main thing with them is positioning them in a way where they have some overlapping fields of fire while also not blocking eachother up and also not all getting tied up in one fight.

[Sn3z]

Decide how you want to use food, personally the days of mass colonizing settlements at high tiers has long gone for me unless, I'm capturing 9 slot capitals, You can go though cycles of spending food and building it back up or keeping it in full green, plan to spend any excess on more menace from below. Depending on that choice will then dictate how you should go about playing skaven, simply put;

Green food = wide playstyle
Dropping food levels reguarly will amount to a tall playstyle

Wide = building mass slave stacks(with 2-4 clan rats or night runners) Undercity's should prioritize food then eco

Tall = Better quality Clan rat stacks + weapon teams of course you can use slave stacks but your expansion will drastically slow down since your spending food so it might be safer to use better quality units) Undercity's should prioritize economy buildings then food

Untaint and corruption should also be treated differently if your playing wide embrace untaint, corruption for tall(the difference here is that you be able to enact the food commandment when choosing to ignore untaint), pickup the traits on lords for untaint as in the end you eventually find untaint and corruption kind of levels out.

[Kyso4ek]

Warpfire throwers give good power early game at least against the AI. use like 2 per army. With ambush stance they can start throwing immediately.

If you are Queek you need to level clanrat skills up as soon as possible and use the vet 6 recruitment clanrats with shields.

Tretch needs to use his run away mechanic where it gives your whpole army +13 melee attack after retreating on a global map. And another +13 for ambush.

Skrolk and Ikit are out of luck :D.

[cary2010haha]

btw, dont build clan rats, summon them if you need clan rats.

Slave are way better, cheap n more in number.

They cant kill anything beside weak melee range base unit. Dont waste money and building slot on them